Going From 1G to 3G

Over a year ago

by Kris Broughton

My 1G phone was working just fine.

The Super Glue was still holding the curved piece of plastic along the top of my five year old flip phone, a piece of plastic that served as a backstop for the plastic hinge connecting the two sections of the phone. But it did what was supposed to do—ring when some called me and maintain the wireless signal until I hung the phone up.

Recently, I have had to come to grips with the fact that managing several different projects and multiple workplace environments is next to impossible without some means of unifying your email accounts and having access to them all in real-time. So I figured I had no choice but to finally break down and get a smartphone.

If money is no object, this is pretty easy. Simply head to your nearest wireless phone store or mall kiosk and in less than an hour, you will have the latest iteration of the IPhone or Blackberry. You will have enough data access and calling capability to run a small office. The wireless provider will have several hundred dollars of your money.

A couple of evenings of internet shopping led me to a new phone and data service, with a totally free smartphone for a monthly commitment that was only $9 per month more than my normal bill.

This is where the fun began.

The last time I ordered a phone on the internet, it came the next day via overnight delivery. I opened the box, pushed the power button, and that was it. Other than adding contact information to my address book, and choosing a ring tone, I was done.

Smartphones seem to require a lot more care and feeding to get them to even begin to do the things they are supposed to do. You have to tell it to search for WiFi connections. You have to tell it how long to leave the backlight on. You have to download email management software that you then have to tell how to access your current email accounts.

There are many, many other things you could tell it to do, but thankfully, the battery has just run completely out of power. Which is another thing I’ll have to get used to as I “train the battery” by fully discharging it the first few times before recharging. My good old 1G phone can still go 2 or 3 days before running out of power.

All my complaints aside, it is already beginning to feel like I have more control over my ability to communicate with the rest of my world. So I guess I need to go find an outlet and get this thing some juice.

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